The weird thing about romance in your typical, modern-day, Saturday morning cartoon, is that it’s not often portrayed on-screen.

This can be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. In the case of some shows, like Littlest Pet Shop, or My Life as a Teenage Robot, our main cast is composed of teenagers. And generally, teenagers get involved in romance, whether they want to or not. Obviously this is not true in all cases. But I remember when I was in high school, around fifty per cent of all students were in some type of relationship. Not only that, even if you’re not in a relationship, at that time of your life you tend to want one. So in those shows, a lack of romantic sub-plots, would feel like they’re actively avoiding it for no reason.

On the other hand, having every episode feature that kinda thing would actually be… kinda sad. And it would get stomach churning pretty quickly. Imagine every episode featuring our main characters doing nothing but talking about the opposite sex. And even if it didn’t make you sick, there’s no way to make likeable characters out of that. If they’re girls, they’d come off as vapid stereotypes; and if they’re boys, they’d come off as slimy pickup-artists. Continue reading →